1. Technical Field
The present invention is directed toward an apparatus for making citrus juice, and more particularly toward an apparatus for automatically feeding and pressing citrus fruit to extract the juice therefrom.
2. Background Art
Machines for making fresh juice from citrus fruit are widely used. Frequently, grocery stores or the like will even place such machines in an area where they can be seen so that customers can actually see the juice being made and thereby rely on the freshness of the juice. In such installations, it is, of course, desirable to allow that multiple pieces of fruit can be handled with minimal operator intervention.
One structure which has been used severs the fruit in half and then extracts the juice from each half by inserting a generally hemispherical rotating member into the peel. This structure is not, however, readily adaptable for different conditions, inasmuch as the hemispherical members have a fixed diameter. Therefore, the structure cannot readily be adapted to different fruit conditions. That is, different batches of even a single type of fruit can have generally different dimensions (e.g., different diameters, different peel thickness) depending on its source. Since making good citrus fruit juice requires the right amount of squeeze (squeeze too much and peel oil is introduced into the juice to adversely effect its taste, squeeze too little and some of the desired juice is not extracted from the fruit), this structure will at best approximate ideal operation only when the hemispherical members happen to match the particular batch of fruit being pressed. Further, this structure is clearly not readily adaptable for use in making juice from different types of fruit (for example, in a structure built to make orange juice, the hemispherical members will be too large to make lemonade and too small to make grapefruit juice).
Another structure which has been used to make citrus fruit juice crushes an entire piece of fruit between two meshing concave members, with the juice being extracted therefrom through a tube which is inserted through the fruit peel as the fruit is crushed. Large amounts of solid pulp material are naturally forced through this tube, and therefore operation of the structure could be hindered by clogging of the tube. Further, cleaning of the tube, not only to allow proper operation but also to maintain sanitary conditions, can be difficult. Still further, the interaction of the concave members of this structure will have a natural tendency to excessively crush the peel along its outer diameter, which could result in the introduction of undesirable peel oil into the juice, adversely effecting its taste.
The present invention is directed toward overcoming one or more of the problems set forth above.